He Was Poet and He Hadn't Realized It
by Vicki Vance
Summary: Obi-Wan decides to be an author. Silly in a Tom Lehrer kind of way. If you don't know who Tom Lehrer is, read it anyway.


HE WAS A POET AND HE HADN'T REALIZED IT

by Vicki Vance

Summary: Obi-Wan decides to be an author.

Takes place a year or so after TPM.

Humor: because it's funny.

Disclaimer: I don't own Tom Lehrer, William Shakespeare, Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Titanic, Moulin Rouge, Robert Frost, Lewis Caroll, Smashmouth, Abba, or Star Wars. -whew!- I am not making any money off of this.

Obi-Wan Kenobi sat himself with a heavy _thoomp_ in his comfy chair, sinking deep into the plush leather. Ahh, this chair was wonderful for meditation. It was soft, comfortable and lacking distraction.

But he wasn't going to meditate. He was going to try something he hadn't done for a long time, back when Qui-Gon was still alive.

He was going to express himself.

Obi-Wan's apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, was a troublemaker. There was so sense in saying otherwise. After spending lessons with him all day long Obi-Wan wanted either to fall immediately to sleep, fervently argue with Qui-Gon's ghost for encumbering him with such a burden, or get drunk. When Obi-Wan meditated after lessons with Anakin, his meditations didn't work like they were supposed to; while he should have found his calm center in the Force and experienced its flow through himself and all life around him, he found his stress at not being able to say to Anakin what he really wanted getting in the way. His frustration, his annoyance and even his rarely-seen anger seeped into his meditations.

He decided he needed a brief escape from reality and the only way he could think of this was by becoming a writer. Not a full-blown writer, of course. He was still a Jedi Master, and he could never un-do that. He'd just be a writer on the weekends.

Using his thumb to crack his knuckles one by one, he stared at his computer screen. What would he write about? He had no idea for characters, no inkling of plot, not much of anything in the way of inspiration other than the concentrated desire to briefly run away...

_Words_.

That had always been his strong aspect. Obi-Wan had a way with words and sooner or later he'd develop his voice into a soothing tone, a bit like Qui-Gon's.

No characters. No plot. Just words.

_Hmm, that's all a vignette is. I could do that..._

After he'd opened the word processing program, he stared at the keyboard, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. Then, he typed:

_Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention!_

_A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene!_

Obi-Wan frowned at what he'd written. It sounded too dialectical, like he was some sort of playwright. It was good, but not quite what he wanted. He tried again, this time considering something he'd had on his idle his mind on for quite a while:

_Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-boggling big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts compared to space._

A little whimsical and truthfully sincere. Obi-Wan absentmindedly ran his tongue along the edges of his upper teeth. Not quite what he was in the mood for. How about a real escape to fantasy:

_In a hole in the ground there lived a_

There lived a what? A dwarf? A wizard? A little person? A hobbit, maybe?

_Nah_, he thought, deleting it.

Maybe a sappy romance? He'd never given it any thought before, and there was no harm in trying:

_I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go._

No. Scratch that. It'd never work. In a few strokes, he'd deleted the accursed words. He needed something important, something he'd like to write about.

How about a drama of some kind? Perhaps, based on a great social revolution? Like industrialization? That would make a good plot, now if only he could find the words:

_It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness._

Obi-Wan stopped himself before the word obsession got out of hand. He forcibly pried his hands away from the cursed keyboard and breathed a sigh of relief, thankful he hadn't sent himself spiraling into a permanent word fiasco. He quickly deleted what he had written and thought maybe a little soothing poetry would be in order:

_The greatest thing you'll ever learn_

_Is just to love and be loved in return._

_Nuts._ There he went of on that romantic thing again. All right, poetry _without_ romance:

_Whose woods these are I think I know._

_His house is in the village though;_

_He will not see me stopping here_

_To watch his woods fill up with snow._

Well, that was rather nice. But if he were going to be successful, he'd have to specify that the woods weren't inhabited by flesh-eating flowers or giant spiders or gelatinous masses of doom and destruction. Obi-Wan huffed with annoyance There just simply weren't any pleasant woods in the galaxy! And there were no woods on Coruscant, that's for sure.

Still, Obi-Wan found he liked his poetry. It wasn't bad, just picky. If he made it a little ludicrous, then it might be all right:

_'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves_

_Did gyre and grimble in the wabe;_

_All mimsy were the borogroves_

_And the mome raths outgrabe._

_"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!_

_The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!_

_Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun_

_The frumious Bandersnatch!"_

No, too strange. And besides, it reminded him of having to caution Anakin and he didn't like being whisked back to reality.

He thought of a song he liked; how it made him tingle all over with energy whenever it on the radio wave receiver made him feel euphoric. He wondered if he could write song lyrics, and carefully typed out:

_Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed_

_She was looking kinda dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead_

Obi-Wan was actually appalled with himself. What atrocious grammar! He knew if something like this were ever published it'd be a terrible example for children like Anakin to follow.

There was noise outside the door to his quarters and Obi-Wan was jarred back to actuality.

_Speak of the devil._

His Padawan suddenly burst into his quarters, followed by his Rodian friend, and before they quickly shut the door behind them, Obi-Wan heard a little girl screeching at them. Anakin met his Master's face and grinned sheepishly.

"We're not home," he said to his Master over the pounding of the girl on the other side of the door.

Obi-Wan watched, feeling depressively helpless, as his Padawan scuttled to and out the balcony window and hopped to the next one over, his friends at his heels.

"Let me in you yucky face; I know you're there!" the girl screamed on the other side of the door. She sounded young, about nine. "You apologize right now! You know I don't like spiders!"

Obi-Wan stared at his screen and mumbled "_Mamma mia!_", still in song lyrics mode.

If he put it all together, what did he get? A drama... a strange drama, rather... with romance... and fantasy... bad grammar... social revolutions... royalty... that takes place in outer space... with the new addition of peril...

Obi-Wan's eyes watered.

The only story with words and characters and plot he could think of was a story about himself.

The only way he could escape reality was to write about what he was escaping from: his life.

He pouted with determination, sat up straight, ignored the screaming and pounding of the little girl and began to type, slowly, gingerly:

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...._

The End


End file.
